Significance
Assuming that the inscription on the James ossuary is genuine, the next question is whether "brother of Jesus" refers to Jesus, the founder of Christianity.
Professor Camil Fuchs of Tel Aviv University stated that, of the thousands of ossuaries found, only one has been found with a reference to a brother, concluding that "there is little doubt that this was done only when there was a very meaningful reason to refer to a family member of the deceased, usually due to his importance and fame." He produced a statistical analysis of the occurrence of these three names in ancient Jerusalem and concluded that, at the time, there were 1.71 people named James with a father named Joseph and a brother named Jesus. Professor Fuchs says he can state with 95 per cent assurance that it is a statistically accurate conclusion.
Read more about this topic: James Ossuary
Famous quotes containing the word significance:
“The hysterical find too much significance in things. The depressed find too little.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
—Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)